The court noted that YouTube takes several motivated actions to actively organize and optimize how videos are displayed. By doing so, it becomes more than a neutral hosting provider. Therefore, it can\u2019t rely on a safe harbor defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough the connections, sorting, filtering and linking, in particular by creating tables of contents according to predefined categories, determining the surfing behavior of users and creating a tailor-made surfing proposal, offering help etc, YouTube leaves on the role of a neutral intermediary and therefore cannot claim the host provider privilege,\u201d the court wrote.<\/p>\n
YouTube disagreed with the ruling and appealed the matter at the\u00a0Higher Regional Court of Vienna.\u00a0The video service maintained that, as a neutral hosting provider, it\u2019s protected under the safe harbor provisions of the Austrian E-Commerce Act.<\/p>\n
After a careful review of the case, the\u00a0Higher Regional Court of Vienna agreed with YouTube, overturning the previous order. According to the appeal court, YouTube doesn\u2019t have an \u201cactive role\u201d and is therefore shielded from liability through its safe harbor defense.<\/p>\n
The Court doesn\u2019t dispute that YouTube provides\u00a0search, categorization, and advertising services. However, these are seen as part of the normal business model of hosting platforms, which do not make the company liable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it had to forgo structuring and search options in order to avoid a damaging \u2018appropriation\u2019 of video content, its video platform would lose all user-friendliness,\u201d the Court writes in its decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe less users are able to find videos of interest to them amid the vast multitude of uploaded videos (several hundred million in this case), the less it would make sense even to visit such a video platform,\u201d it adds.<\/p>\n
Puls 4 cited the GS Media\/Sanoma case, where the European Court of Justice ruled that posting infringing hyperlinks, during the course of business, can lead to liability. However, that doesn\u2019t apply in this case, the Court notes, as YouTube wasn\u2019t aware of the infringing nature of the videos.<\/p>\n
In summary, the\u00a0Higher Regional Court of Vienna concludes that, as a hosting platform, YouTube benefits from the safe harbor privilege. This means that it\u2019s not liable for uploads of users and Puls 4\u2019s complaint is dismissed as a result.<\/p>\n
The outcome is good news for YouTube, as the order from the lower court severely threatened the operation of the video platform. However, it is not the end of the road yet.<\/p>\n
Higher Regional Court of Vienna allows the case to be appealed at the Supreme Court and Puls 4 informs TorrentFreak that it will use this opportunity.<\/p>\n
Puls 4 stresses that the current decision does not take into account relevant decisions of the CJEU, including the case regarding the infringing nature of The Pirate Bay. Nor does it reference the recent developments regarding liability under the proposed Article 13\u00a0of the EU copyright directive.<\/p>\n
\u201cPuls4 will therefore definitely file an appeal to the Supreme Court,\u201d a company spokesperson informs TorrentFreak.<\/p>\n
A German court referred various\u00a0copyright infringement\u00a0related questions<\/a>\u00a0to the European Court of Justice a few months ago. Since this involves YouTube directly, the Austrian Supreme Court will likely consider the pending outcome in this case too.<\/p>\n A copy of the\u00a0Higher Regional Court of Vienna\u2019s verdict is\u00a0available here (pdf)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Source: \u00a0![\"TorrentFreak\"](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/torrentfreak.png\")
<\/a> TorrentFreak.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"